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 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one   *
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file *
 * distributed with this work for additional information        *
 * regarding copyright ownership.  The ASF licenses this file   *
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the            *
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance   *
 * with the License.  You may obtain a copy of the License at   *
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 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an  *
 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY       *
 * KIND, either express or implied.  See the License for the    *
 * specific language governing permissions and limitations      *
 * under the License.                                           *
 ****************************************************************/

package org.apache.james.mime4j.stream;

/**
 * A descriptor containing common MIME content properties.
 */
public interface ContentDescriptor {

    /**
     * Returns the body descriptors MIME type.
     * 
     * @see #getMediaType()
     * @see #getSubType()
     * @return The MIME type, which has been parsed from the content-type
     *         definition. Must not be null, but "text/plain", if no
     *         content-type was specified.
     */
    String getMimeType();

    /**
     * Gets the defaulted MIME media type for this content. For example
     * <code>TEXT</code>, <code>IMAGE</code>, <code>MULTIPART</code>
     * 
     * @see #getMimeType()
     * @return the MIME media type when content-type specified, otherwise the
     *         correct default (<code>TEXT</code>)
     */
    String getMediaType();

    /**
     * Gets the defaulted MIME sub type for this content.
     * 
     * @see #getMimeType()
     * @return the MIME media type when content-type is specified, otherwise the
     *         correct default (<code>PLAIN</code>)
     */
    String getSubType();

    /**
     * <p>
     * The body descriptors character set, defaulted appropriately for the MIME
     * type.
     * </p>
     * <p>
     * For <code>TEXT</code> types, this will be defaulted to
     * <code>us-ascii</code>. For other types, when the charset parameter is
     * missing this property will be null.
     * </p>
     * 
     * @return Character set, which has been parsed from the content-type
     *         definition. Not null for <code>TEXT</code> types, when unset will
     *         be set to default <code>us-ascii</code>. For other types, when
     *         unset, null will be returned.
     */
    String getCharset();

    /**
     * Returns the body descriptors transfer encoding.
     * 
     * @return The transfer encoding. Must not be null, but "7bit", if no
     *         transfer-encoding was specified.
     */
    String getTransferEncoding();

    /**
     * Returns the body descriptors content-length.
     * 
     * @return Content length, if known, or -1, to indicate the absence of a
     *         content-length header.
     */
    long getContentLength();

}
